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If you’re a mom with young kids (or if you otherwise have young kids in your life), you know that they’re quickly bored with the new toys they receive for Christmas. Rather than cluttering your home with new things for them to play with—and your spirit with frustration—try these zero-clutter ways to entertain young kids this winter. Ideas like this help to teach kids to enjoy their current blessings instead of waiting for more… and you’d never guess that so many of the things around your house could be so much fun!

Welcome back to the Organizing Your Photos series, the Halloween edition!

So, Halloween is not my favorite holiday (as I wrote in this post about making Halloween about Jesus). I know that Christians have varied stances on Halloween, and I’m not trying to glamorize it. But I do believe the righteous can find joy, fun, and blessing in Halloween without stepping into wickedness.

And I do love seeing my kids all dressed up! I always take pictures. Since this is a holiday when I’m pretty much guaranteed to have at least one picture, Halloween makes for a perfect As-They-Grow album.

Jesus came that we might have life, and have it to the full. This is His kind of abundance—not stuff, but life!

A lot of wonderfully abundant life is lived on family vacations. To truly live in God’s abundance and enjoy His blessings, I’ve needed to re-frame how I look at vacations:

I want to enjoy anticipating a vacation—to embrace the planning and the exciting feelings about the joy to come.

I want to enjoy the vacation as it happens—to let my planning unfold and be flexible, to be in the moment, to relax. (I actually wrote an entirely separate post about vacation planning, and then relaxing.)

I need to enjoy remembering the vacation—to keep the joyful memories alive, to remember the good times, to tell the stories. This is where the Vacation Album comes in.

If you haven’t seen the earlier posts in this series, you may want to check them out here. The most important thing to know is that I’m encouraging you to enjoy your photos, not spend hours and hours making the perfect album.

I was reading through the New Testament letters recently, and it struck me that the prayers Paul (and Peter and John) pray for the newly founded churches would also be amazing things to pray over kids growing in faith.

My goal for these posts is to help you feel like a successful family historian and truly enjoy your photos, without a lot of work. (For more about that, read the first half of the first post here.)

Speaking of work, I know this is the Christmas season. Chance are that you’re not going to start a photo project, no matter how small it is. You have a lot to do right now, and I get that. But now is the time to think about your project, and maybe even take a couple of photos to get ready!

My goal is to encourage you to enjoy some of your photos offline, so you can cherish those memories and bring your family closer together. If you missed the first post about simple Interest Albums, please check it out!

Remember, you can enjoy your photos without a big, hard, long project. Keep your project simple, short, and fun. The Interest Album was the perfect way to start. Now, let’s keep it rolling…

Last May, I posted about the Live it Up summer initiative. The Uptons tried an ambitious plan to Use it Up, Eat it Up, Play it Up, Read it Up, Watch it Up, and Trip it Up. You can read more about it here, but basically we determined to enjoy the summer by enjoying the things we already had!

If you’re wondering, it went really well. We didn’t do everything I’d planned, but we did an awful lot of it and I’ve never been so contented with a summer of fun. We played with more, tried more things, and used up more of our stuff than we ever have before. Getting organized about our family’s summer was wonderful!

Then their father Israel said to them, “If it must be, then do this: Put some of the best products of the land in your bags and take them down to the man as a gift—a little balm and a little honey, some spices and myrrh, some pistachio nuts and almonds. Take double the amount of silver with you, for you must return the silver that was put back into the mouths of your sacks. Perhaps it was a mistake.Take your brother also and go back to the man at once.And may God Almighty grant you mercy before the man so that he will let your other brother and Benjamin come back with you. As for me, if I am bereaved, I am bereaved.”